Radio Troubles
 

I set up my six channel radio today after a few months on the shelf. The receiver did not pick up any signal from the radio. I looked over the circuit boards and found some melting? beneath the RX crystal. The crystal looks fine, did I ruin it somehow?

http://pic18.picturetrail.com/VOL900.../332012118.jpg

From the photo, it looks like you got it wet and corrosion set in. Try cleaning up the contacts and see what happens. I bet if you look at the crystal the pin that goes in that hole looks the same way. The surrounding area in the photo looks like tell-tale signs of wetness corrosion too.

I cleaned the contacts and there is no still radio contact. I'm completely lost with this.

To me the "melting" looks like a blob of adhesive (something like RTV or Shoo Goo?) used to keep the crystal firmly in place under vibration (not a bad idea IMO).

If the holder is truly melted, my guess is that what you are seeing is "collateral damage", caused by the failure of some other component in the oscillator circuit.

I would submit that 99.99% of receiver electronics failures are caused either by miswiring, water ingress, or circuit board/solder joint cracks....

Narly1

I've looked again and that "melted" stuff is some sort of adhesive. I may take it into a local LHS to see if they can help me. The last time I used this system it was working perfectly fine.